Pushcart Nomination: "Work Quirk"

Editor Katie Sions of Rumble Fish Quarterly nominated my poem "Work Quirk" for a Pushcart Prize 2019 and remarked in her “Editor's Note” introduction to the Winter 2018 issue, “Award-winning poet Rich Murphy offers up “Work Quirk,” a poem that reads, and we mean this in the most complimentary terms possible, like a flesh-eating virus.”

Thank you. https://rumblefishblog.wordpress.com/issues/

Work Quirk
 
 
Something to say rampages
through the cranium.
 
Bushmen shinny up the brainstem.
Temples rumble with china shop revelation.
A voice box mashes into finger tips
while tectonic plates sound out
and shape for the décor and the elephant.
 
When eyes sizzle with broken dawn,
a secretary for a state
heads for the round table.
 
Navigating the unscaled,
the note taker for trunk and task soothes
where wrinkles on clef paper challenge.
 
A stenographer in climbing shoes
interprets for an independent mind.
 
Passion rattles in the percussion section
while an engraver attends to observe
and to recommend to the wind
instrument and keyboard.
 
Negotiating to strike deals
between experience and “thud,”
takes in time and gives back change.
 
So metaphor police rely on a forger
always returning to the scheme
to move heaven toward earth.
 
The gray day seams with silver lining
as long as the misunderstanding
results in wallpaper.

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